Congrats on your first 5K! There are some exercises you can do to work out the pain in the top of your foot. Anyone got them handy? If you don't hear here, feel free to also post in the Ask the Docs. They should have some exercises for you to do.
Congrats Colin! For me personally, vff's cause me tofp so you may look into ditching the vff's for a little bit and seeing if it goes away. As far as the exercises TJ was talking about I'm not sure. I never really got tofp unless I was in vff's.
What kind of VFFs do you have, Colin? You want to make sure that the strap or lacing (if that's what you're using) isn't too tight over the top of your foot. Sometimes this resolves the problem.
Another thing, it could just be the way your feet/bones are settling. Your feet are not used to this new freedom, movement. The bones will start to find their new, correct, natural placement, and the bones will start to pull on the ligaments and tissues. This is what is believed to cause TOFP; other than what the VFFs do, which is sometimes a mystery, considering changes to both barefoot and minimal should cause the same TOFP, but it really happens more in VFF wearers, from my experience talking to others.
Rock on with your first 5K!!!
Congratulations Colin! It's all uphill from here! I used to run with the VFF Bikilas, which were never wide enough for my feet, and I had to run with the straps completely "off" in order to avoid pain on the top of my foot.
Congrates on your first 5K! That's where my addiction started to take hold! Next thing I knew, I had more weekends with races than without! -Jonny
Congrats Colin on your first 5k!
As for TOFP (top of foot pain, if you hadnt caught on to that already) I got that a little bit when I was first hitting a mile or mile and a half barefoot. It wasnt that bad though and I just backed down my mileage slightly for a couple more runs. I think for me it was just using muscles and ligaments my feet werent used to. It did come back a little when I first started wearing vff but it didnt have anything to do with straps or anything, just that the vff made it really easy to go further quicker and I pushed myself a little to far the first couple times with them. Backing it off a little for a week and then strictly abiding by the 10% mileage gain per week and I never had TOFP since. I remember reading TOFP is one pain you can work through it if its minor, but if its really bad you might have to take some days off and then ease back into it. Good luck hope you can get it resolved.